1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a health care and monitoring system which is capable of detecting and monitoring vital signs and information of individuals during the course of routine living activities of individuals taking place in routine living environments such as homes and offices and wherein the vital information thus obtained is used in connection with routine health care and maintenance activities of individuals for the purposes of health care and maintenance, including prophylactic medicine, early detection of diseases and continuation of therapy.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Due to recent trends for longevity, the importance of self health care and maintenance has been receiving increasing attention irrespective of age of people. Today, many people, elderly or young, not only periodically consult professional medical institutions such as hospitals and clinics for diagnostic and various professional advices helpful in prevention and early detection of diseases, but also are constantly rendering considerable effort by themselves to maintain their health by making use of non-medical health maintenance facilities such as gymnastic or sport clubs. Also, a variety of home health care and monitoring instruments, such as home sphygmomanometer and home urinal assay assemblies, are available to enable people's home health check in support of professional medical monitoring as well as to assist in continuation of home care.
Primarily, the vital information useful in health care and maintenance of individuals is monitored at professional medical institutions such as hospitals wherein various medical testing and measuring instruments are provided. In certain occasions, the vital signs and information detected thereby are forwarded through a local area network or telemetry to a host computer or work station of the hospital for centralized storage and processing, as described, for example, in Japanese Patent Kokai Publication Nos. 2-140875(1990); 2-116351(1990); 2-164336(1990); 2-299632(1990); and European Patent Publication No. 269,907 A1.
The medical services for testing and vital information monitoring at such professional institutions are generally available whenever required to inpatients who are under hospital care. Therefore, the inpatients have the benefit of increased chance of testing and monitoring and may thus be subjected to a continuous and updated care.
Outpatients, home care patients and those individuals who desire a periodical health check, however, must visit the hospital from time to time in order to have their health condition monitored. This will involve considerable economical burden and time loss. In the case of home care patients, in particular, a visit to hospital may often involve substantial physical and mental exhaustion. As a result, there is a tendency that people are discouraged from visiting hospitals adequately frequently whereby the occasions of sampling and monitoring of the vital data are limited to the minimum. This results in the disadvantage that it is difficult to obtain and accumulate the latest vital information due to failure of updating.
Another important problem associated with vital data monitoring at the professional institutions is related to the possible insufficiency or lack of reliability of obtained data. It has been experienced by skilled medical professionals that, during electrocardiography and measurement of the artery blood pressure, for example, a patient who has realized measurement is apt to be overly excited and becomes hypertonic so that the resulting data often exhibits unusual value. Accordingly, repeated measurements are often necessary until a reliable data is resulted.
It is known in the art to arrange a testing and measuring instrument within the residence of a patient and to transmit the obtained vital information to a host computer of professional medical care institutions via public telecommunication line as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Kokai Publication Nos. 2-54031(1990); 2-279056(1990); 2-121627(1990); U.S. Pat. No. 4,962,550; and European Patent Publication No. 292,311 A2. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,962,550 assigned to the assignee of the present invention describes a home health monitoring system associated with a toilet system incorporating a built-in apparatus for urinalysis which is adapted to transmit the obtained urinalysis data to a remote computer. Home health monitoring device is also described in International Patent Publication No. WO 91/05311. This publication proposes a medication delivery system adapted to support home care of patients wherein a terminal equipment having a physical measuring device such as sphygmomanometer is provided in the home of a patient. In response to instructions from a central station, the patient wears and operates the sphygmomanometer to permit measurement of the artery blood pressure, the resulting data being in turn forwarded to the central station for professional decision and instructions on medication.
Advantageously, these household testing and measuring systems ensures monitoring of the latest daily health information because measurement at home may be carried out readily and more frequently. Furthermore, measurements may be performed under adequately relaxed conditions. However, the problem encountered with these household systems is that a series of testing and measuring procedures must be performed by the individuals by themselves on their own judgement and manipulation. In contrast to health monitoring conducted at hospitals wherein testing and measuring instruments are operated by a physician or nurse skilled in their manipulation and procedures, a patient or user of the household measuring system must be positively engaged in electronic dialogue with a computer of the measuring system by manipulating a man-machine interface such as a computer keyboard in order to cause the measuring system to successfully perform a predetermined program of testing and measurement. To perform automated urinalysis, for example, it is necessary for the user to manipulate the keyboard to select the program menu, to input his or her name, date and time of measurement and so on, and then to depress a start button at a proper timing. Such electronic dialogue by way of the man-machine interface is cumbersome even for ordinary person and is especially difficult to perform for elderly individuals who are encountering loss of memory, degradation in eyesight and decreasing muscle response.
Manipulation of the man-machine interface is also necessary to operate those household appliances which are used in homes for the purposes of health care and maintenance of individuals and which require a certain vital information for their intended operation. For example, an indoor exercise apparatus such as a bicycle-simulated ergometer requires that various parameters including the stature, body weight, age, sexuality, body fat content and desired amount of exercise of the user be input through an input device. Similarly, for measurement of the body fat content, it is desirable to input a vital data on the stature, body weight, age, sexuality and the amount of daily exercise. A conventional computerized menu processor adapted to provide alimentary menu requires input of vital information on the body weight, the results of urinalysis, the amount of exercise, etc. As information input operation of all these data must be performed by the manipulation of the man-machine interface such as a keyboard device, it has been cumbersome to set up the health care and maintenance appliances.